MARKET BASKET. TASTINGS.

Mixing It Up With Brownies

February 17, 1999|By Kristin Eddy.

The battle lines were drawn before the tasting even got under way: cakey or fudgy? Nuts or no nuts? Served warm, or cool and chewy out of the refrigerator?

Everyone has a different standard when it comes to the perfect brownie. (So there's no need to declare here that cakey, nut-free and cool-so the chocolate taste has time to deepen-is the only true path to brownie nirvana. Those who disagree will have to settle for being sadly misguided.)

The mission was to find a packaged brownie mix that all our tasters could love. After tasting eight commercial products, baked in the Good Eating test kitchen and served at room temperature, we found some consensus-mainly, that we preferred made-from-scratch brownies.

But if we're going to bake from a mix, we want brownies that are thick, chewy and chocolatey.

Following are the winners, which should help soothe any brownie emergencies when you don't have the time to bake from scratch. Ratings are on a 9-point scale with 9 being best.

Here are the top three, with tasters' comments. The remaining brownies are listed in order of preference.